Hollywood A Little Too Distracted To Pay Attention To Blurry Messages From Above
As this afternoon drags on, we've become increasingly desperate for any material not related to either The House-Arrested Socialite Who Shall Not Be Named, At Least In This Post or the imminent destruction of various entertainment industry outposts along Wilshire Boulevard. But salvation finally arrived in the form of this reader-supplied cameraphone photo of the sky above the Fox lot, illustrating ABC Family's efforts to publicize Kyle XY, a basic cable television show that our research has revealed to be about a teenage boy's struggles to remove a tight-fitting undershirt. Additionally, the bothersome buzzing of skywriting biplanes (really, this stunt never gets old!) prompted some others to document the difficult of properly rendering a airborne promotional message on a windy day:
I just thought you guys should know: apparently ABC Family is getting pretty desperate to get viewers for the show "Kyle XY". As of right now, for the second time today, we have skywriters outside our office in Brentwood writing a barely legible 'Kyle XY' in the windy skies above Wilshire Blvd.
It's taken at least two separate attempts and about four hours for my co-workers and I to figure out what the heck they were writing. We thought it was just another botched marriage proposal to someone with the unfortunate name of "Ylexy", until someone else chimed in that at one time there had been a "K".
I thought the standard protocol for advertising by air was the banner attached to a small plane a la that chick (whose name I have forgotten) who was saying that her movie idea was stolen? Maybe not.
And somewhere known as "Downey," a similar problem:
Currently overhead here in [teeth gnash[Downey[[/teeth gnash] there is a biplane flying over us, spelling out "KYLE XY is not alone." Unfortunately, the breezes off that pond to the West of us is creating havoc. By the time he got to "alone", the "KYLE" looked more like, um, "I - - II_"
I tried to get a photo but my cameraphone just couldn't commit to that far a distance.
I hope this instills some small amount of hope during this dark, dark day.
Of course, on a day like today, the skywriting strategy seems even sillier and more ill-advised than usual. If ABC Family had some truly cutting-edge thinkers in their marketing department, they would've known that the best way to get some attention for the show would be to head over to the Kings Road Detention Facility and chat up members of the swarming media, offering opinions on today's big news peppered with mentions of their product.